"Chávez, No, Chavez!" - a poetic solidarity

Cesar Chavez speaks to farm workers in Imperial Valley, California in 1979
Photo by Steve Fontanini, Los Angeles Times

Chávez, No, Chavez!
by Mike Marcellino

Only way I could remember this day
was to hold on to cryptic Jesus.
Two words,
all wrapped up in
two words,
cryptic Jesus.

Though it was Sunday, I didn't start out for church,
not right away.
On the way to the beach,
stopped for a beer at Jack's -
a real watering place,
a maze of old low slung
white chipped painted wood
reminding me of Sherwood's Forest
where we drank Saigon tea
with the enemy back in another day.

On the beach it was already threatening.
Right away I encountered a bearded young  surfer
with long tangled black hair
and a goatee.
Waving his one arm," he screamed at question toward me.
"Is it a tornado?"
Looking at me as if I would surely know.

"Where are you guys from?" I asked, curiously.

The three crazy surfers, boards under hand
stood, dying to paddle out.

"Did you see the life guard twirling his red flag,
jumping down from his high wood chair,
blowing a whistle?
That didn't seem to impress them.

"Can we go in the water,"
the three amigos looked at me,
anxiously, waiting for my answer.

"Did you see the life guard twirling his red flag,
jumping down from his high wood chair,
blowing his whistle?"
I appealed to the three amigos again.

"Where are you guys from?"
I asked again to change the subject.
"Venezuela." he said, still wanting to go in the surf.

Rain splashed down in gigantic drops
pelting the three amigos and me.
First north, then south, lightening bolts flashed down to the sea.

Then, the first amigo told me he saw a funnel cloud.
"Over water?" I asked, that perked my interest.
"No, over land, not the sea."
That was enough for me
to pack up, head for some safety.

This looks just about like the truckload of United Farm Workers
who arrived on our picket lines on July 4, 1973
at the onset of our strike against The Painesville Telegraph

"Venezuela?  I said in a puzzled tone.
"I always get mixed up.
Far as I've been is Mexico.
Is that shuh-vez (Chavez)?"
I asked, knowing the answer.
"No, chah-vez (Chávez)," he shouted out,
but not angrily.

"Cesar 'chah-vez' was the leader
of the farm workers in America.
For the union!"
I shouted above roar.





"I know cause he sent me a hand written letter
and a bunch of his farm workers
loaded in a truck
to our Fourth of July strike in 1973
for solidarity.
They walked the picket lines with us
outside the Painesville newspaper plant,
along Lake Erie, in eastern Ohio.

"A farmer worker read his letter
right in front of the reporters and TV for all to see.
I wish I still had the letter from Chavez
but I think I know what it would say -
something about...the 'unjust conditions...
'dignity and solidarity,
 forever.'"

Painesville Telegraph newspaper building sign in 1969

"It's 'chah-vez," he insisted.

I doubt very much the smiling amigos
from South America
had ever heard of the Chavez
from North America.

Oh, no, by now the blue grey black
thunderstorms packed with lightening
was looking like the space ship that covered
the capital in Independence Day, the movie.
"Cryptic Jesus," I muttered to myself,
trying to hold on.

"Holy Mother, Mary, sweet Jesus,
I am a mixed up, lost


Episcopal
blond haired boy
turned Presbyterian
raised Catholic.

"What do I know,"
I said to the three amigos, starting on my way.

"Cryptic Jesus, Cryptic Jesus," I finally said out loud,
hoping not to get struck down instantly.

"Where's the VFW dance hall when i need it?"
I wondered, as my mind lapsed 
back to a wood shack on the west side of Cleveland
surrounded by hundreds of Harleys
moonlit shining silver.
After all, it was 
the Hell's Angels, 
Viet Nam Vets Motorcycle Club
bikers night.  
"cryptic Jesus, cryptic Jesus" 
"What happend to Crazy Ed?" 
was all I could think to say.

Remember the lettuce and grape boycotts
all over the USA?
My Chavez,
no little squiggly thing over the "a"
(like the president of Venezuela)
organized 50,000 field workers from California
to Florida by the late 1970s, so
our 100 strong Typographical Workers
was ahead of its day.
And, I do wonder if we hadn't had
the United Farm Workers help
the Teamsters woulda turned back the trucks
filled with huge rolls of white printing paper
and us peons would've won our better pay.
(We didn't know that a turf war
broke out between the two unions
not long before,
but we were young and pure.)

The other Chavez, Hugo, to set the record straight,
they say is a socialist, now
rattling the United States
leading his 'Bolivarian' revolution,
named after Simon
who won their independence
from the Empire of Spain
in the early 19th Century.

A poster used to rally Americans to boycott
lettuce and grapes during the nationwide
boycott to get better wages and working
conditions for farm workers, poster by
the Women's Graphics Cooperative,
Chicago, 1978

But old Cesar, a Mexican
American
from Yuma, Arizona
who died in ninety-three, at age 66,
same as that people's highway,
now always carries the day.
Folks from California
celebrate his birthday
March 31st, each year -
Cesar Chavez Day, a California state holiday.

His favorite saying in those days of struggle
that began fifty years ago:
"¡SÍ SE PUEDE!"
(Yes We Can)

Hey, it also worked for Barack Obama.

Chávez no Chavez by Mike Marcellino copyright 2012  

Postscript on Cesar Chavez, the farm workers 
and The Painesville Telegraph newspaper strike 
by Mike Marcellino

When Chavez died on April 23, 1993, staff writer George Ramos wrote The Times obituary published the next morning. He wrote:

Cesar Chavez, who organized the United Farm Workers union, staged a massive grape boycott in the late 1960s to dramatize the plight of America’s poor farmhands, and later became a Gandhi-like leader to urban Mexican-Americans, was found dead Friday in San Luis, Ariz., police said. He was 66.

Here's how the Library of Congress describes the influence of Chavez in helping farm workers gain a better life:

On August 22, 1966, the United Farm Workers Organizing Committee (UFWOC), later renamed the United Farm Workers of America (UFW), was formed. The UFWOC was established when two smaller organizations, the National Farm Workers Association (NFWA) and the Agricultural Workers Organizing Committee (AWOC), both in the middle of strikes against certain California grape growers, merged and moved under the umbrella of the AFL-CIO. Under the founding leadership of Cesar Chavez and Dolores Huerta, the UFW won many labor or civil rights concessions for disenfranchised Mexican-American farmworkers, an important aspect of the Chicano movement. The Chicano movement has been an often-ignored part of the civil rights struggles in the 1960s; it was, nonetheless, a landmark period for the second-largest ethnic minority in the U.S.  

Before the rise of the UFW, working conditions were harsh for most agricultural workers. On average, farmworkers made about ninety cents per hour plus ten cents for each basket of produce they picked. Many workers in the field were not provided even the most basic necessities such as clean drinking water or portable toilets. Unfair hiring practices, such as favoritism and kickbacks, were rampant. Seldom were their living quarters equipped with indoor plumbing or cooking facilities.  

The strike against the Painesville Telegraph involved all non-management workers, from reporters to typesetters. It was a classic union organizing struggle by 100 workers against a powerful publisher who ran his newspaper like a plantation where full time reporters with a family and children were paid so little they qualified for food stamps.

While smoking was allowed in the newsroom in those days, women had to go to their powder room to smoke a cigarette. A senior reporter with 25 years experience made only $25 more than a cup reporter making $100 a week. Since no one counted hours, it's hard to say how much people were making an hour, less than $2 an hour. Minimum wage was $1.60 an hour. I was one of the reporters on strike and a strike leader and qualified for food stamps (before going on strike).

Strikers also went door to door, asking subscribers to support the workers and cancel their subscriptions to the newspaper until the strike was settled.  The paper's circulation of about 23,000 daily was cut in half.  The strike, with only 50 workers taking an active part, went on for nine months through the winter of 1973-74.  There was at least one bombing during what became a bitter strike.  The publisher, the Rowley family, which owned several newspapers and radio stations in northeast Ohio, hired security men, armed with .357 magnum revolvers and high powered rifles, who were often seen on the rooftop of the newspaper building.  Ten strikers, including myself, were found in contempt of court by a county judge for various alleged wrong doing, including picket line activities, but charges were never filed.  Not long after the strike collapsed, the National Labor Relations Board found the publisher guilty of unfair labor practices.  There were no injuries during the strike.

After nine months, the strike collapsed in April 1974 when Local 53 of the Typographical Union in Cleveland ran out money to pay meager benefits. Thirteen years later in 1986 the Painesville Telegraph closed its doors. I don't know of a single worker on strike who went back to work. The Telegraph, the oldest paper in the Western Reserve, was founded in 1822 by Eber Dudley Howe, an abolitionist leader whose home was a station for the underground railroad for runaway slaves.

Strikers, men and women, young and old walked picket lines 24-hours-a-day and published a five day a week strike newspaper, Lake County Today, which remains archived in the Painesville Morely Libray and referenced in Australian archives. I have also discovered a film of the striking workers archived in the WPA Film Library.
Here is the WPA discription of the film:

Segment begins with a shot of a building indicated as "Local 53" by the sign that hangs over the front door. The camera pulls back to reveal an African-American reporter standing at an intersection. As he speaks, cars are driving behind him. Reporter states that even though Local 53 is on strike, the Painesville Telegraph newspaper has continued publication. He goes on to say that the union has decided to give the paper some local competition by coming up with a publication of their own. Report holds up the newspaper which is entilted "Lake County Today". Shot of a woman standing behind a counter that is piled with newspapers. The woman explains that many local residents had canceled their subscription to the "Telegraph" after they went on strike. The new paper took this opportunity to ask the locals what they would really like to see in a newspaper. The results of the questioning lead to a strictly localized perspective. View of newspaper production activity. CU of hands setting a cartoon image on the front-page layout. Shot of man and woman discussing the layout. Shot of a sign that reads "Buy the Newest Paper-Lake County Today". Shot of man with a full beard sitting in the Local 53 office reading "Lake County Today". (Man looks ultra 70's) Shot of two men seated at a desk reading the newspaper. The man who is facing the camera is talking on the phone. The other man picks up the receiver of a black rotary telephone.  

Death of the American Dream

  
The inequality crisis
by Mike Marcellino

I knew something was wrong after the 1960s and 1970s when many Americans were living the dream and taking action to bring on civil rights and stopping America's longest war the Vietnam War people were living.

What happened?  How did the American dream die in three decades?  Well, now you and I can find out in the new book The Price of Inequality by Nobel prize sinning economist Joseph E. Stiglitz.  Here's an article from Vanity Fair magazine to give you a test of Stiglitz' findings.  This should help us figure out how to clear the decks, change direction and bring back The American Dream."

Well, at least this growing inequality in American may put the lid on the desire of people to immigrate to the United States.  We are no longer the land of opportunity for the poor, working and middle classes.  While many conservatives in American may not know the dream is dead, or care, as long as they get richer the rest of the world surely knows of our downfall.

Consider the Walton family: the six heirs to the Walmart empire possess a combined wealth of some $90 billion, which is equivalent to the wealth of the entire bottom 30 percent of U.S. society.
- Stiglitz in Vanity Fair.

The 1 Percent’s Problem

Why won’t America’s 1 percent—such as the six Walmart heirs, whose wealth equals that of the entire bottom 30 percent—be a bit more . . . selfish? As the widening financial divide cripples the U.S. economy, even those at the top will pay a steep price.

Related

Read Joseph E. Stiglitz’s “Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%,” from the May 2011 issue 

By Joseph E. Stiglitz Illustration by Stephen Doyle

Adapted from The Price of Inequality, by Joseph Stiglitz, to be published in June by W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. (U.S.), and in July by Allen Lane (U.K.); © 2012 by the author.

(Excerpt from Vanity Fair)

Let’s start by laying down the baseline premise: inequality in America has been widening for dec­ades. We’re all aware of the fact. Yes, there are some on the right who deny this reality, but serious analysts across the political spectrum take it for granted. I won’t run through all the evidence here, except to say that the gap between the 1 percent and the 99 percent is vast when looked at in terms of annual income, and even vaster when looked at in terms of wealth—that is, in terms of accumulated capital and other assets. Consider the Walton family: the six heirs to the Walmart empire possess a combined wealth of some $90 billion, which is equivalent to the wealth of the entire bottom 30 percent of U.S. society. (Many at the bottom have zero or negative net worth, especially after the housing debacle.) Warren Buffett put the matter correctly when he said, “There’s been class warfare going on for the last 20 years and my class has won.”

So, no: there’s little debate over the basic fact of widening inequality. The debate is over its meaning. From the right, you sometimes hear the argument made that inequality is basically a good thing: as the rich increasingly benefit, so does everyone else. This argument is false: while the rich have been growing richer, most Americans (and not just those at the bottom) have been unable to maintain their standard of living, let alone to keep pace. A typical full-time male worker receives the same income today he did a third of a century ago.

From the left, meanwhile, the widening inequality often elicits an appeal for simple justice: why should so few have so much when so many have so little? It’s not hard to see why, in a market-driven age where justice itself is a commodity to be bought and sold, some would dismiss that argument as the stuff of pious sentiment.
Put sentiment aside. There are good reasons why plutocrats should care about inequality anyway—even if they’re thinking only about themselves. The rich do not exist in a vacuum. They need a functioning society around them to sustain their position. Widely unequal societies do not function efficiently and their economies are neither stable nor sustainable. The evidence from history and from around the modern world is unequivocal: there comes a point when inequality spirals into economic dysfunction for the whole society, and when it does, even the rich pay a steep price.

Let me run through a few reasons why.

Click this link for the full story by Stiglitz in Vanity Fair:

Stiglitz on the death of the American Dream in Vanity Fair magazine

I find this part rather startling.  It captures just how upside down America is today:

Consider the Walton family: the six heirs to the Walmart empire possess a combined wealth of some $90 billion, which is equivalent to the wealth of the entire bottom 30 percent of U.S. society. 

(Many at the bottom have zero or negative net worth, especially after the housing debacle.) Warren Buffett put the matter correctly when he said, “There’s been class warfare going on for the last 20 years and my class has won.”

We are now at a turning pout in the matter of the growing inequality in America, the death of the American Dream and the stagnant economy with millions jobless with the presidential election only 16 weeks away.

So, how many people are unemployed now?  The Labor Department report for May shows unemployment is tuck at 8.2% with 12.7 million Americans unemployed.  But that figure is grossly misleading.  

And amazingly, I found the real, man on the street data in the most unlikely place:  The Website of the Republican Majority in Congress. Funny, the very people who have supported policies favoring the 1%, the rich, show that the true number of American jobless or underemployed (part timers who can't find full time jobs and people who gave up looking) is 23,533,000!  The Republicans of course are promoting the terrible state of the economy and unemployment in order blame it all on President Obama.  Just image if Mitt Romney wins and the Republican Party now controlled with reactionary conservatives retain control of the House and capture the White House along with the Senate.  

The Republicans also note that 46.2 million Americans live in poetry, the highest poverty rate in 52 years.  It's mind blowing that they have the nerve to use the data showing the death of the American Dream that they, for the most part, caused.


Here's an excerpt from the Website of the Republican Majority in Congress:

• 15.2%: The rate of “underemployment” or “real unemployment,” including the unemployed, those who want work but have stopped searching in this economy, and those who are forced to work part-time because they cannot find full-time employment is 15.2 percent.

• 12,806,000: There were 12.8 million unemployed Americans looking for work in the month of February, up by 48,000 from January.

• 8,119,000: The number of Americans who worked only part-time in February because they could not find full-time employment was 8.1 million. The number of people working part-time for economic reasons reached 8 million for the first time in history in January 2009 and has remained above 8 million for 37 consecutive months.

• 2,608,000: The number of people who are available to work and have looked for a job at some point in the last year but are not counted as unemployed because they gave up their search is now 2.6 million.  

• 1,006,000: The number of discouraged people who stopped looking for work because they believed there were no jobs available is now 1 million.

• 23,533,000: The total number of “underemployed” Americans is 23.5 million, including those unemployed (12.7 million), those who are no longer looking for work (2.8 million), and those who are working part-time because no other work is available (8.2 million).

What I find rather frustrating is that President Obama has not and does not seem to be inclined to confront the causes of the growing inequality in America and death of the American Dream.  He's made some off handed comments that Occupy Wall Street has a point, but he isn't making this a campaign issue, at least not yet.

I believe if President Obama does not confront the decline of America forcefully with a concrete plan of action to do something to reverse course and bring the dream alive, he will lose the election.  And, if that happens, the great majority of Americans will suffer for it and American will become a second rate nation.

The time is now.  The situation is critical.  It's a turning point.  You might say the choice is:  a nation of opportunity versus a nation of Walmarts.  It's just about that simple.  

The fog of Afghanistan

War's outcome rests with people's will
By Mike Marcellino

Part 3 of a 3 part series on America’s course in the Afghanistan War


Today I was asked what at first seemed to be a simple question about a recent column I had written about America’s course in Afghanistan and the escalation of the war. The column was called, “Afghanistan: Different viewpoints, same ol’ same ol.’ The column cited a BBC of an interview with a senior American diplomat and Marine captain in Iraq and a Stars and Stripes story about what U. S. troops are encountering fighting and community building on the ground in Zabul Province, a Taliban stronghold.


“You have to ask yourself, ‘what are the major powers doing in a backwater such as Afghanistan??’” a reader asked. He used two question marks and I would see why trying to answer his question.


What we are doing in Afghanistan? Like some people say on Facebook about their relationships –“It’s complicated.”


One answer could be that the United States leaders fear facing hostel governments in the Middle East and South Asia threatening our oil supply (Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran and Pakistan).


A number of major powers have interests at stake, including the United States, Russia and China. In addition the struggle to control oil supplies, Russia and China have large Muslin minorities.


The answer may be the old Cold War “domino effect” is back in vogue in Washington. Politicians and military leaders had believed that if one country would fall to Communism then others would follow. This was the rationale for the Vietnam War, along with control of natural resources of Southeast Asia.


The United States feared the spread of Communism and yet, even though we lost the Vietnam War to the communists, other nations didn’t fall and the Soviet Union collapsed.


The decade long war in Southeast Asian cost 6 million lives, including 58,000 American troops. Some argue that just fighting against communism in the Vietnam War led to its collapse in the Soviet Union. Interestingly, Vietnam is now rather prosperous with many resorts on the South China Sea beaches and increasing tourism.


Since the beginning of the Middle East wars in the early 1990s, 
U. S. policy makers have put communism on the back burner and Islamic fundamentalist insurgents and terrorists on the forefront. Radical Islam is the “evil” we must confront with force, not communism, at least for the time being.


Afghanistan has been embroiled in political turmoil and war for 35 years with leftists, monarchists and Islamic fundamentalist and minorities battling for power. In the late 1970s the Soviet Union set up a communist government in Afghanistan. In a 9-year war, Afghan Islamic fighters, the mujahedeen, defeated the Soviet army. The country was devastated, as one million Afghans died and millions more fled the country as refugees.


Everyone agrees the present Afghan government is corrupt and lacks wide popular support. The country is rather lawless. Most of the people are poor and illiterate. The poppy crop supplies much of the heroin for the world’s illicit drug trade and funds the Taliban and other insurgents.


The answer may be that we’re convinced that in Afghanistan we’re in a holy war, with good fighting evil. Many fundamentalist Christians in the U. S. armed forces, including senior military leaders, believe they are engaged in a holy war.


Radical Islamic fundamentalist, principally al Qaeda and its supporters believe they are waging a holy war against the “infidels,” or non-Muslims.


One answer may be a resurrection of the Crusades of the 11th Century. Each side of course believes the other to be “infidels.”


Both “holy wars,” some historians and observers believe are rooted in the timeless desire for power and control, whether it be a cave, a country or the world.


Whatever the reason for the U. S. involvement in Afghanistan, we’ve decided that force and violence are the only solution. The 
U. S. won’t talk to the Taliban until they surrender and the Taliban won’t talk until the U. S. forces leave the country. There seems to be little attempt to break the deadlock.


Regardless of the answer to the question, ultimately the outcome of the war and the nature of Afghanistan will be determined by the Afghans.


The present U. S. strategy in Afghanistan seems to be predicated on the belief that we are engaged in a worldwide war against extremists, including the Taliban in Afghanistan and Pakistan.


A few political leaders, even Vice President Joe Biden to an extent, along with senior diplomats, military and intelligence officers believe in a narrow focused strategy to defeat al Qaeda.


President Obama, Secretary Clinton and our military leaders have rejected that strategy, believing that Afghanistan is the den of al Qaeda.


As a result 30,000 more U. S. troops are going to Afghanistan bringing the total of 10,000. Next spring the U. S. plans to attack Taliban strongholds in rural and urban areas, beginning a new "ground up" strategy of rebuilding Afghanistan in the towns and villages.


We plan to step up the training of Afghan troops, start turning security over to them and in the middle of 2011 start withdrawing U. S. troop “if conditions on the ground permit.”


That’s the strategy the U. S. used in losing the Vietnam War. President Nixon called it “Vietnamization.”


South Vietnam had an army of two million, one of the largest in the world at the time of its defeat by North Vietnam, two years after U. S. troops withdrew.


The likelihood of the Afghan army being able to secure the country is questionable. Factionalism and lack of confidence in and corruption of the present government must be overcome. Afghanistan isn’t much of a nation for nation building.


“What are the major powers doing in the backwater of Afghanistan?”


“It’s complicated.


The outcome of the war is simpler.  It lies with the will of the Afghan people.

Afghanistan, Vietnam: "same ol', same ol'"

Troops war view differs from Washington 

by Mike Marcellino

Part 2 of a 3 part series on America's course in Afghanistan

The more leaders tell you things are "different" the more they seem the "same."


In a nutshell, that's what I'm piecing together in another installment of my series - "America's Course in Afghanistan."

In Vietnam, where I served in the U.S. Army as a combat correspondent at the height of the war in 1968, they told us the body counts, how we were killing them 10-1 or more.  The told us how most of the country was now "pacified." (Sometimes pacification took B-52 bombs, endless jet strikes, ship salvos, artillery fire and agent orange.)  They told us we're winning "the hearts and minds."

The more reading, the more recalling , the more researching, the more America's involvement and increasing escalation in the civil wars in Afghanistan and Vietnam fit a saying learned on the streets of Cleveland  - "same ol', same ol'. 


In today's interview with the BBC, Matthew Hol, an ex-Marine captain in Iraq who resigned as the senior civilian in Zabul Province, says only political action, not the troop surge, will settle the 35-year civil war in Afghanistan.  He also estimates 500,000 troops would be needed to subjugate the countryside. 

(See the BBC story)

BBC interview with Matthew Hoh

More than 500,000 U.S. troops were in South Vietnam at the height of the war in 1968.  That effort allowed U.S. and South Vietnamese forces to control the major cities, but not the rural areas in a country of 65,000 square miles and 16 million people.  Afghanistan has nearly twice the land area (119,000 square miles) and population (30 million) and a terrain even more difficult, if that's possible.


President Obama and U.S. military leaders say the Afghanistan war isn't another Vietnam. 


(In the Vietnam War, U.S. troops pulled out in 1973 after a decade long war.  Three years later, the corrupt and controversial government and army of South Vietnam collapsed weeks after the North Vietnamese army invaded.)

A report November 12 "Stars and Stripes" from Zabul Province, a Taliban stronghold and route from Pakistan, American soldiers tell a view of the war much different from our leaders in Washington. It reminds me of that similar difference between the capital view and the reality on the ground in the war 40 years ago in South Vietnam.  


Drew Brown's interviews with soldiers from the U.S. Army's 5th Stryker Brigade from Ft. Lewis, WA, are telling in this excerpt -


“During the three-day mission in the Chinehs, a number of soldiers said that even though the area had been identified as a suspected Taliban stronghold, the villagers were the friendliest of any they had encountered in Zabul. But when officers asked about the Taliban, they were usually met with blank stares or polite, noncommittal responses. Most villagers denied knowing anything about the Taliban. Some made slashing motions across their throats. ‘You stay here for one and a half hours in our village, and when you leave, the Taliban will come in our homes and beat us or worse,’ said one man. Replied 2nd Lt. James Johnson, 23, of State College, Pa.: ‘Well, there’s nothing I can do to help you, if you don’t help yourselves.’”

(See "Stars and Stripes" story)

"Stars and Stripes" story from Aabul, Afghanistan

Sounds awfully familiar to me as I covered the Vietnam War as a US Army combat correspondent and my stories and photographs were often published in "Stars and Stripes."

It also seems, even with the surge of 30,000 more U. S. troops to total of 100,000 won't be enough.  As many as 500,000 (including Afghanistan government forces) may be needed to get the job done. The job being either defeating or at least beating the Taliban and other insurgent forces back enough to allow the Afghanistan army and police to keep the peace.

Though U. S. troops have been in Afghanistan for nine years, the effectiveness of Afghan security forces remains uncertain.  What's odd about that is Afghanistan's insurgent forces, the Islamic mujahedeen, defeated the Soviet Union in a nine year war ending in 1989.

In 1996, the Taliban, a radical Islamic group, came into power in Afghanistan, but, by 2001, with help from the United States, the Northern Alliance, a group of minorities, overthrew the Taliban.

While all this is pretty factual summary, if you stop to think about it, it sounds bizarre. It reminds me of the Abbott and Costello comedic question, "Who's on first?  Afghanistan also has the same chaotic ring of the Mexican revolution in the early 1920s,

The Afghanistan and Vietnam wars are also reminiscent of a scene in "Lawrence of Arabia." After the Arab army, led by British Maj. T. E. Lawrence, had defeated the Ottoman Empire, German ally in World War I, they couldn't get along well enough to keep the power on and water running in Damascus.

The winner in Afghanistan may be who is willing and able to fight and die and not give up.  One thing seems certain; people don't like to be occupied by foreign armies.  History tells us the people in far flung countries didn't like the oppressive rule of the emperors of Rome, and the Roman Empire collapsed.

In a recent commentary in "Dandelion Salad," an Internet blog highly critical of America's military involvement in the Afghanistan, Rick Rozoff indicates that documents show that Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal estimates a combined army of 500,000 U. S., Afghan and NATO forces will be needed to win the war.   

 A foreign soldier on the ground in a civil war quickly understands that the will of the people who live there decides the outcome.


In the Stars and Stripes story, an Afghan villager tells a US Army officer what it will take to end the war -


"We asked what can be done to improve your situation here," (1st Lt. Christopher) Franco said. "They said, ‘Our problems will be resolved when you guys leave and we can sit down and talk to the Taliban leaders.’ At least they were honest."


Mike Marcellino, a national award winning civilian journalist, served in the U. S. Army as a combat correspondent and photographer in the Vietnam War

America's war in Afghanistan: "Nothing is written"

Peace route in South Asia through India and Pakistan 

by Mike Marcellino 

Part 1 of a 3 part series on America's course in Afghanistan

Why can't the United States resolve human rights problems peacefully, without the use of force, any longer? 

Secretary Clinton says the U.S. won't talk unless the Taliban throws down their weapons (surrender). 

Mullah Omar, the Taliban leader, says they won't talk until the U. S. and NATO forces leave Afghanistan (surrender). Oddly, Omar was America's friend when he lost an eye fighting against and Soviet forces in Afghanistan in the 1980s. 


And, the war and violence in Afghanistan and across the border in Pakistan escalates and widens. 


According to an article written by Raja Karthikeya in Asia Times Online Nov. 25, 2009, the way to peace in Afghanistan is through India and Pakistan.  Interestingly, the author never mentions the United States or NATO once in his article.


One wonders if American and European diplomats and political leaders are listening to the voices of reason, peace, history and politics of South Asia.  Afghanistan, Pakistan and India share that region, its history and current entanglements.  Granted Afghanistan has ties to the Middle East.  And as Karthikeya points out, the Taliban doesn't seem to fit anywhere, and appears to be more an ideology than a political movement. 


I highly recommend reading the article by Karthikeya, a researcher for the Center for Strategic Studies in Washington D.C.


Here's the link to the article -
A route for South Asian peace through Afghanistan

The historical problem with the view of United States' diplomats and political leaders is the function, for the most part with blinders on - seeing the word in America's view without really looking at nations through their eyes of their own people.


America hasn't always had her provincial blinders on.  Two cases in point that I can testify to from my experience in our national government as an aide to one of the most respected congressman and champions of human rights in our country's history.


In the past, the United States has ended oppression in the world without the use of military force. America brought freedom to Jews in the Soviet Union and ended the longest period of marshal law in world history, bringing freedom to the Taiwanese. 


I can vouch for the fact that oppression can be ended and peace achieved without a shot being fired.  


From 1983 to 1987, I served as an as an aide to former U. S. Congressman Louis Stokes of Ohio and worked successfully with many people in the United States and the world to resolve, without military force, critical human rights problems that at the time seemed insurmountable in the Soviet Union and Taiwan.  Both human rights matters existed within the backdrop of tensions over the Cold War and the threat of war between China and Taiwan. 


As an Englishman, "Lawrence of Arabia," (or, at least, actor Peter O'Toole in the Academy Award winning film), once said:  


"Nothing is written.


In my book, "Nothing is insurmountable."  


Copyright Mike Marcellino 2009